That was a huge problem. It’s still an institutional problem that needs to be solved.
Can you imagine a regular court subpoena where the recipient just blows it off and then the court is like “well, that’s just to bad, guess we don’t get to hear from them” or the police tells the court, “sorry we don’t want to do anything”.
It’s all to slow is the problem. Back to the example above. It doesn’t take weeks, and extra process for the court to enforce the subpoena. They simply do it.
Right now there are people all over the country who have been subpoenaed for something and they’re all asking their lawyers right now if they can just blow it off and not respond.
If a congressional subpoena doesn’t carry the same weight and it cannot compel someone to show up, maybe we should call them invitations not subpoenas. Congress already invites people to come and speak. No sense having two formats/words if they work exactly the same.
They may show up and take the fifth, give weaselly answers, generally try to avoid supplying any meaningful information while not actually lying. But, dammit, they should have to at least show up.
